What Are We Supposed To Believe In

[Psychonaut]

Nothing?

[Guest]

In yourself.

[Henri]

A lot of stuff, though it is a means and not a goal in itself.

Suppose you are looking for a gas-station and someone tells you which way to go. When you believe him you`ll follow that way and when the advice was a good advice you`ll end up at the gas-station. At that moment you can forget about the belief because now you know. And it`s the highest knowledge because it is out of experience.

So you understand the warning to watch out for false prophets; you might end up without gas!

[asgard94]

Beliefs are not necessary if you have eyes. Just observe, see reality the way it is without formulating any judgement upon it. Unless you see a unicorn. I hate unicorns...

[Truth]

Find what's really true, the deepest truth (spiritual enlightenment) then you can build upon beliefs and principles to find more truths to "believe'' in.

Edited March 6, 2016 by Truth

[vizual]

Believe in as much as you want except the things that hinder your happiness in your life.

[Argue]

I'll tell you this much, don't believe everyone. 

[Extreme Z7]

You can believe only in things that you know cannot be expressed in words. At least, cannot be accurately expressed in words. Basically, you have to learn to believe in stuff that are not beliefs. Create belief systems that are bent towards destroying one's own belief system. Very tricky stuff.

[Grasshopper]

@Love Whatever you believe, realize it's only a belief. Also, try to recognize what a belief is. It's a stream of thought that plays in your mind as "I believe in nothing" or "I believe this because..." (and so on). Ultimately, you cannot believe anything, because if you pay attention, you didn't think these "belief thoughts". They just happened on their own.

[Soumya]

Believe in energy , because it can neither be created and nor be destroyed! It's as abstract as you think it to be and as tangible as you want to make it for yourself.

[Conscious Encounters]

For a while I thought that I had to do my best to identify my beliefs and 'transcend' them; eliminate them in a sense. I feel that a lot of spiritual teachings can make this come across as a primary goal... 

Ultimately, I think it is fairly ignorant to believe that it is possible not to believe in anything. 

 

Belief systems are incredibly illusory and it is very important to recognize one's beliefs and develop a more unfiltered awareness... 

however, beliefs are important. 

 

I agree with with Extreme27 in a way. Every person can reach personal truths. I think this is at the core of Personal Development. Realizing who you truly are (the nature of self) and what aspects of your experience are genuine. But these will all be unique to everyone. 

 

What are your thoughts?

 

When it comes to spirituality and enlightenment work I feel like to be a functional member of society and a great friend, among a few of the roles we all play, you can't be a yogi. I feel a lot of spirituality is based off the experience of individuals who dedicated their entire lives or their career to silencing their minds and pursuing "God". So when people say things like beliefs are not necessary, and you can completely silence your mind for the majority of your experience, I just can not accommodate that. 

 

Maybe I am currently clouding myself with a certain belief that makes me think this, but idk, I feel like I always come back to this...

 

1.) People who are moderately to very wealthy

2.) People who have access to information technology

3.) People who are situated higher up on Maslow's hierarchy

4.) Individuals who make a living teaching spirituality to others; spiritual teachers

 

Assuming spirituality does not really have an end, as you can always learn more and give and receive additional context to truths of your experience, arn't these the only types of people who can reach the deepest truths of the spiritual path?

 

Sorry this kind of turned into a rant, but I just wanna get my thoughts out there. I don't know much so please enlighten me  thats why I'm here...

[FindingPeace]

Quote

What Are We Supposed To Believe In?

We're not supposed to believe in anything in particular. There are no rules or obligations in life other than the fundmental ones of survival. But also understand what a 'belief' is. A belief is not 'truth'. It is something we think of or assume as true but we can't prove or experience directly. If we could experience something directly it is no longer a belief, it is a truth. Truth is absolute, impirical. Belief is just an abstract concept in your mind, it is subjective.

In Leo's video about the truth behind all human knowledge he explains how we need to start reducing our 'beliefs' and move towards truths. So I guess that's where your question comes in. What do we believe in? I say we should believe that we need to believe less, and experience more truth.

Look at other sentient lifeforms and consider what they believe in. Do they even have the ability to 'believe' in anything or do they just work with direct truth as they experience it? This is somethiing I find myself wondering.

[Pav]

@FindingPeace From what I can tell the only truth you can know is that your perceptions exist in what ever form they came in and that there is awareness. You do not know if your perceptions are an accurate representation of an external world, or if an external world exists since these are beliefs. If you accept what modern science tell us, then you can see that your perceptions of the world are inherently wrong, since colour, smell, feeling, sound, ect do not exist in the external world, they are merely representations of matter and energy produced by the brain.

It's rather apparent to me that some beliefs are more useful than others for real world applications (eg the concepts of modern medicine for curing and preventing diseases or the concepts of physics and engineer for constructing things).

I believe everybody ought to recognise their beliefs as beliefs and realise their inherent inaccuracy, but I'm struggling to see how it is in anyway desirable to do away with all you beliefs and models of the external world entirely. Could you please explain it to me?

My cat will often sit next to her bowl when she's hungry, it seems like she believes I will bring her food if she does that. She may not hold the beliefs in words like most humans do, but rather experience her beliefs in the raw "feeling" which underlies thoughts in humans.

[abrakamowse]

We are not supposed to believe anything, we will experience it.

[Guest]

Woah! Hold on a second.

We all need a belief system to function.  

Beliefs only become a problem when they are based on PRE-rational and unfounded sources.  When they are rigid and dogmatic.

There is room for both spiritual enlightenment experiences and a well informed, rational and flexible belief system.

 

[FindingPeace]

5 hours ago, Mat Pav said:

I believe everybody ought to recognise their beliefs as beliefs and realise their inherent inaccuracy, but I'm struggling to see how it is in anyway desirable to do away with all you beliefs and models of the external world entirely. Could you please explain it to me?

To be honest with you this is something I am still trying to work out myself. You are right that we should all recognise the limitations of our beliefs, at the very least.

There is no denying that our brains are packed with a huge web of abstract knowledge with only a small proportion of it being absolute, empirical truth. The problem is that much of this knowledge is responsible for our suffering and psychological unrest. Particularly where our own 'knowledge' conflicts with that of others or of reality. So it stands to reason that if we can shrink that knowledge base, shed particularly the most dysfunctional and problematic belief systems and take on more truths, then we can reduce our suffering and increase our peace of mind.

Exactly to what extent we can or should do that I don't know yet.

5 hours ago, Mat Pav said:

My cat will often sit next to her bowl when she's hungry, it seems like she believes I will bring her food if she does that. She may not hold the beliefs in words like most humans do, but rather experience her beliefs in the raw "feeling" which underlies thoughts in humans.

I like this example. I often sit and observe my own pet and wonder how they perceive the world and what they may or may not think or believe. I like to compare how they operate to how we do. It is true that they don't have the same knowledge base as they don't have the ability to concetualise the same things that we do. Therefore it would seem that they operate more from 'truth' than from belief. Perhaps they hold the key to how we need to shrink our knowledge base.

Your cat sits next to her bowl when she's hungry. But is she holding a belief that you will bring food or is she operating from the truth that experience has taught her - that the bowl is where her food usually is and that if she sits next to it you will provide food for her. Is it a belief or a truth? After all, her experience has proven this to be a truth has it not? Noone came up to her one day and explained that if she sat by her bowl you would bring her food. She had to discover and learn this experientially. Until you stop providing food it will continue to be a truth for her.

I guess you could still call this a belief. What starts off as an experience of truth becomes remembered as a belief. There is no guarantee that it will be truth the next time. So this puts in question what truth really is. Because fundamentally, nothing is certain or permanent.

The only thing that we can be sure of as truth, is the present moment, and the experience of consciousness.

[Brian Greendahl]

I think each individual has to answer or discover that for him or her self. For me it's been a process of discovery.

[Thesleeperhasawakened]

In science, the most grounded belief.

It's the reason you are here having the time to be so introspective.

We all know that there would be no time for such luxury in a forest/tundra of scarce resources. 

[Pav]

@FindingPeace There certainly are many beliefs people hold which cause suffering and these should be removed or altered. At a first glance (I will have to investigate this further) it seems that most of these are distorted beliefs with no basis in reality or are subjective value judgements. 

It would be hard (perhaps impossible?) to suffer when your knowledge conflicts with others or reality if you recognise that beliefs are just models and are not truth.

Something interesting which I've observed about beliefs is that the thoughts themselves are not the belief, rather there is an associated 'feeling' (or maybe another deeper unconscious processing) which underlies that thought. Have you ever cut off a thought mid sentence before it makes any sense, and yet still knew meaning behind it? Or had moments where you just 'know' something without having to verbalise it? Sometimes when I'm on mushrooms I will begin to strongly feel beliefs which I had previously known verbally. Maybe our pets are just thinking in emotions?

When some spiritual teachers speak of eliminating beliefs or eliminating your thoughts could they mean to use these feelings instead? I think this could be dangerous since these feelings are not truth either but can be incredibly convincing. In one of his lectures, Terrence Mckenna talks about a psychologist experimenting with nitrous oxide who suddenly realised the meaning of existence and quickly wrote it down. When he reviewed what he wrote afterwards, the note said 'everything smells like burnt walnuts.' Very often when on psychedelics you will have a profound realisation of some ultimate truth about the universe, but when you go to examine this truth you realise it was all nonsense. To be honest, when some spiritual teachers describe their profound realisations, their descriptions sound strikingly similar to the pseudo-realisations I've experienced on drugs.

But maybe our pets don't think at all and are just acting on instinct and psychological conditioning? I don't see the value in living in such a way though. I think it is better to place your awareness on what's going on in your life, examine things logically with the help of models and beliefs.

[handheart]

I think you should think in God and in the universe also and most important in you